Ollie Starkey
Oliver "Ollie" Starkey 'also known as the "'Mad Scotsman" is the third playable character and protagonist in We Happy Few. Appearance Ollie is a somewhat short and burly fellow. Where he has red-brown hair on his balding head, it's relatively short, save for his beard, which he has grown out a lot. Ollie wears a Sergeant's Nr. 2 Service Dress with a tool belt and webbing system with large pockets, reddish-brown pants as well as ankle boots held tight with gaiters. Personality Ollie has, thanks to his long-time of living in the Garden District, gone a bit crazy from all the chaos going on in Wellington Wells. He is a realist, as he does not deny the hunger crisis striking the town. He is a bit of a foul mouth at times, as he swears a great deal and is very angry at those who he sees as being in the wrong (because he's in the right, according to himself). However, Ollie does show some redeeming qualities, such as remorse over past actions of his and kindness to those who aren't hostile towards him. As an example, he expresses a great deal of kindness to a few others, such as Arthur Hastings(or as he prefers to call him "Little Artie") and his companion of sorts (see below). History Ollie hails from a lower-class worker family in Scotland, having lived to witness gas attacks on London during World War I as a child. In adulthood, Ollie was previously a sergeant in the British Army, being at one point stationed overseas in British India, before settling down in Wellington Wells. Ollie moved into a neighbourhood that ended up housing many of the primary characters of the game, chief among them Arthur Hastings and Sally Boyle, among others. During World War II, Ollie served in the British Army and fought in both Europe and on the British Isles, most notable at Ramsgate, before the surrender occurred in 1943. During the German occupation, Ollie became the secretary and personal assistant of General Robert Byng and helped him to create a lie that would prevent the people of Wellington Wells from rising up in a futile rebellion and ultimately killing themselves. He helped to organise the creation of the paper-mache tanks which would keep the people in check without actually being real tanks. Ollie also became an accomplice for the Occupational Authority. The one thing he did though that affected him the most was turning in Margaret Worthing, who was hidden away by her father Jack Worthing (later Uncle Jack). Jack Worthing attempted to hide Margaret but Ollie ratted them out and when the Germans came for her, Margaret attempted to escape and the Germans shot her to death for that. This ended up traumatizing Ollie and greatly changing his views about everything and the memory of Margaret's death would come to haunt him for many years to come. Sometime around when the Germans left, Ollie fell into a depression, and people, with the exception of Victoria Byng, turned their backs on him. He later asked a grown-up Sally to create a drug that would scramble his memories, in order to forget what he did. She complied, and after Ollie took the drug, it completely scrambled his memories and he began to go crazy. He completely forgot everything about his involvement in fabricating the papier-mache tank lie and also forgot about his post-war activities. As an unexpected and unintended side effect of the memory loss, Ollie began to hallucinate a manifestation of Margaret, who through her advice helped him get back on his feet. Ollie still did not remember what he had actually done, though, and came to believe that he was Margaret's father and that Jack had turned her in and got her killed. He began to oppose Joy and eventually begun to hate Jack Worthing, blaming him for being a traitor and German collaborator and soon begun to carry out acts of sabotage against the city's broadcasting infrastructure to stop Jack from broadcasting his show to the people of Wellington Wells. This attempt at open resistance was ultimately unsuccessful, and out of sheer frustration and a desire to avoid having to ever see or hear about Jack again, Ollie left the city proper to live out in the wastes of the Garden District, in the Train Station. Ollie took over the derelict building and turned it into his personal residence and fortified it to keep out intruders, and would spend the next years there living by himself in seclusion. He began to obsessively hoard various kinds of goods, items, and other necessities, most notably foodstuffs, often coming into conflict with the Headboys. However, a chance encounter with Arthur seems to give him a new purpose in life: revealing the truth to the people. Events of We Happy Few Act I Arthur encounters Ollie after seeing him harassing the Headboys from atop his stronghold. Ollie initially doesn't recognize Arthur and tries to attack him with a melee weapon, but Arthur eventually gets through to him. Ollie is seen talking to an unseen character who he keeps calling Margaret. Arthur reveals his plan to get out of Wellington Wells and Ollie agrees to help him in exchange for Arthur helping him rob the Home Army storages at the Military Camp. As part of the plan, Ollie tells Arthur how to shut off the power, although he leaves out the part that the power switch is alarmed. In order to allow Arthur to get through the bridge checkpoint and into the camp area, Ollie manufactures a special type of Moonshine alcohol (with Histoplasma Mushrooms being one ingredient) which he then distributes to the guards, causing them to faint and fall into a stupor, allowing him and Arthur to pass through without problems. Arthur, after going through the military camp, reveals to Ollie how he discovered that the tanks are all paper mache and that the people could have fought back against the Germans, all while realizing that he lied his way off the train. Ollie, also shocked, appears to go back on their deal a moment later, but changes his mind and gives him a random piece of machinery from his stash and tells Arthur to go to the Maidenholm bridge and use it to pretend to be a bridge inspector. They say their farewells to each other, and Arthur continues with his journey. Act II Ollie is not seen during Act Two, but he is mentioned by Sally Boyle upon searching the train station, after the events of its destruction. Act III Meeting a friend and losing one's home Ollie learns from Arthur that the tanks were paper mache, and Margaret begins to ask questions about his relation to the lie, as he was General Byng's secretary. Ollie insists that he had no idea about it, and after Arthur leaves, he decides to go and ask Byng himself the truth. Almost immediately after Arthur has left, the Headboys attack the train station with explosives, causing huge damage to the structure in the process. Ollie fights his way through them, killing many in the process and manages to defuse three large bombs but quickly realizes that the entire structure is about to collapse and more Headboys are en route to the location and that he needs to evacuate in order to stay alive. Ollie makes his way to the top of the station tower, grabs all the essential items he can carry with himself, retrieves an old parachute he has kept in his stash and escapes by jumping off the side of the building. Ollie is able to escape from the train station just as the central tower collapses into the rest of the building, causing the roof to collapse and the walls to crumble, leaving the structure in ruins. Left without a safe place to live in, Ollie first locates a secret stash of items (essentially an improvised Bug-Out Bag) he hid away at one point in the past as a gift for his future self and after that, he begins looking around for a suitable shelter to use. For the rest of the game, he uses the shelters as his main living quarters, just like Arthur did in Act I. Hostile cooperation and hostage-taking Making his way into the Military Camp with the help of a friend, Ollie barges into Byng's office and asks him for the truth. Byng reveals that Ollie did not only know the truth, but he was complicit in the act and ordered the newspaper to help create the paper mache. Margaret is upset, and Ollie brings up the fact that people seem to be starving in Wellington Wells and asks Byng for help. Byng, however, counters with the fact that not only would they not listen to him (given how he's forced to live in the military camp on the outskirts of the city), but would probably be murdered for suggesting it. He goes on to state that the Executive Committee would be equally unhelpful, possibly more so. Ollie suggests getting help from Victoria, but Byng becomes enraged at the suggestion of using his daughter and calls for the guards to come and eliminate Ollie. Ollie escapes with the help of his friend and decides to make his way into the main city to get help from Victoria. Once he reaches her, though, it becomes apparent that she doesn't want people to become unhappy, as she remembers what they did, and tries to turn in Ollie, but he grabs her, chokes her unconscious and ties her to a chair. He then denies her from taking Joy for a while to make her remember and tries to interrogate and convince her to help him, while she becomes increasingly erratic, depressed and begins to remember more of what she did. Eventually, Victoria agrees to sign a Letter of Transit to Ollie, granting him access to the Parade District and thus the Executive Committee. This, however, turns out to be a trick Victoria uses to have Ollie release her, as immediately after being released, she attacks Ollie and knocks him out, and calls the Bobbies on him. Ollie, however, wakes up just in time to avoid being captured by the Bobbies and after quickly stealing a Letter of Transit from Victoria's office, he escapes and decides to make his way to the Executive Committee building. On a quest to show the truth While on his way to the Executive Committee, Ollie realizes that there is a risk that broadcasting the truth to Wellington Wells might make the whole city become hostile and want him dead and decides to, as a preventive measure, formulate a plan to escape Wellington Wells if the need to do so arises. To acquire the means to carry out his escape plan, he makes his way to the Jacobean Society (now known as the Jack O' Bean Society, a fan club for Jack Worthing) and steals a party balloon stored in the attic and then makes his way to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in the Parade District to obtain compressed hydrogen to run the balloon. With the means to escape in his hands, Ollie makes his way to the Wellington Broadcasting Tower to reach the Executive Committee. Once Ollie is able to reach the supposed Executive Committee, he discovers, to his horror, that they have been trying to desperately forget the fact that the food production is falling apart. The Executive Committee has introduced a system, where one of its members holds the "dread responsibility" and agrees to not take Joy, while the rest of the staff keep hitting the nearby Mood Booth to completely forget about all the alarming issues plaguing Wellington Wells. Ollie, suspicious about the whole thing, does some shallow digging and discovers that the person supposed to hold the "dread responsibility" is also secretly taking Joy, rendering the already dubious system completely pointless. Concluding that they're completely incompetent, Ollie then decides to take matters into his own hands and try and force Uncle Jack to help him, and goes up to his studio, only to discover that it's been wrecked and abandoned. Looking around the office, Ollie stumbles across a note telling the employees not to broadcast the same Uncle Jack episode more than once a week, to avoid making people suspicious, which reveals to Ollie that Uncle Jack has disappeared long ago and the whole Uncle Jack show for the past few years has been made up entirely of reruns, revealing to Ollie just how ignorant the Wellies are about their situation. The ugly truth Ollie then finds a recording, marked as being Uncle Jack's last episode and upon playing it, he discovers that Jack was Margaret's father and that Ollie ratted them out and got her killed. The rest of the broadcast reveals that Jack tried to tell everyone in Wellington Wells about the imminent food shortage, and how they need to stop taking Joy and need to go off of their Joy in order to be able to do anything to solve their problems, but as Jack reads through his alarming report, he begins to grow increasingly distressed, alarmed and unstable until he finally snaps and goes berserk, grabbing a Cricket Bat and running around the studio smashing things while madly repeating the phrase "We have come to the end of our time!". Jack then turns to face the camera, peers into it and repeats the phrase one last time in a very serious tone before smashing the camera with the cricket bat, abruptly ending the broadcast and disappearing altogether. Distraught and crying, Ollie breaks down and begs for forgiveness, stating that he never thought that they would kill Margaret. Margaret tells Ollie to broadcast the recording to the people, which Ollie agrees to. Ollie plugs the tape into the broadcasting machine and puts the tape on-air, but this causes the Executive Committee to send in a force of Red Bobbies to assault the studio and stop the recording. Ollie fights them off while continuously making sure that the equipment doesn't lose power or break down. An end to it all Ollie is ultimately able to hold off the Bobbies until the broadcast finishes and makes his way to the roof of the building. Margaret appears to him one last time and tells him how he needs to let go of her. Ollie finally decides to make peace with himself and escapes Wellington Wells on the party balloon he stole previously while angrily taunting the people from up above and pissing on them. Epilogue Ollie is seen during Constable Peters' monologue, where he is still aboard the balloon, letting go of the picture of Margaret that he has been keeping on him this whole time. It is not known precisely where the balloon is carrying him, but at the very end of Act III, Ollie says "I wonder what's left of Scotland." suggesting that he may be heading there. Quests Ollie's Quests Relationships Arthur Hastings Ollie was a former neighbor of Arthur and the boy would often play in his house. Abilities Ollie's abilities are centered mainly around direct combat as he can singlehandedly take down Bobbies and Doctors alike. He has the second-highest health and deals the second-most damage out of all the playable characters (second only to John Constable) but Ollie's traits bring him more negative effects than positive ones: Ollie's style of play centers more on combat and survival, as he doesn't have a Stealth Skill Tree and instead has Combat and Survival along with Super-Duper. Survival allows Ollie to obtain more resources from plants, obtain more health from healing items, run faster and longer, find better items in loot containers, carry more items, eat rotten food without becoming sick, have his crafted weapons last longer, sell items at shops for greater profit and buy items more cheaply. Combat allows Ollie to gain more health, deal more damage per attack, stun enemies and break their weapons when blocking attacks, use less stamina when attacking and blocking, deal damage to multiple opponents with one attack and inflict bonus damage onto unaware opponents. His Super-Duper abilities allow him to throw things farther and inflict more damage, give a small chance to knock enemies unconscious when hitting them, have any weapon that he uses degrade more slowly, and allow him to use less stamina while attacking and blocking. It also gives him the ability to attack faster and have the chance for enemies with less than 10% of their health remaining to run away. Ollie is also somewhat of a moonshiner and improviser as he has access to three unique crafting recipes; Ollie's Grog, Ollie's Black Powder and Strange Alcohol. * Ollie's Grog functions as a sort of "cure-all" and a substitute for Phenocycline Jabs, Sick Up Tea, and Neximide as it will cure Plague, Infection, Food- and Joy poisoning when consumed. * Ollie's Black Powder is a craftable version of Black Powder, which can be used to create Bangers. * The Strange Alcohol is the Alcohol that Ollie uses to incapacitate the guards at the Victory Memorial Camp in Act I and can be used to incapacitate other NPCs too, like Bobbies. Ollie is also something of a handyman as he has access to a much wider array of crafting recipes for survival items, tools, and weapons, at the expense of having far less chemical crafting recipes. Handicaps Ollie is in a major disagreement with the Jacobean Society (now known as the Jack O' Bean Society, a fan club for Jack Worthing) about whether or not Jack is a traitor and German collaborator and this is reflected in-game where members of the Jacobean Society, Wellies with red hats, will instantly turn hostile against Ollie if they spot him. Ollie also suffers from Type 1 Diabetes, (or as the game calls it, "Unwell") and so the player has to regulate his blood sugar by crafting syringes made from honey or eating different foods like pies or scotch. If it goes too high, Ollie will begin to lose health and if it goes too low, Ollie's maximum health will be cut in half, he will deal less damage and he will become very sour and cranky, causing him to start insulting NPCs on sight, alerting them to his presence and turning them hostile. These negative side effects persist until the player either uses a syringe or food to restore the blood sugar to acceptable levels. Gallery Ollie Starkey Character Model.jpg|Ollie Starkey's character model. Ollie Character Showcase.jpg|Ollie in the Garden District. WHF Ollie HERO-hero.jpg|Official artwork of Ollie Trivia * Ollie's blood sugar condition, based on the mechanics, could be designated in real life as Type-1 diabetes. this may suggest that in his youth, Ollie was a sugar addict, for reasons that ought to be obvious. * He cannot use Chemistry Sets. ** If one attempts to use a chemistry set anyway, Ollie will attempt to create something (albeit with little knowledge about how), but his penchant for making explosives seems to get the better of him as he ends up causing a huge chemical explosion, blowing himself back several feet and destroying the chemistry set. He will not take damage, however. * It is mentioned by one of the Home Army NPC's that Ollie was stationed in Punjab at one point, a province in British-India. * James Maxwell mentions that he served together with Ollie at Ramsgate. * He likes dancing. * Ollie could be called a "Half-Wastrel," as he can take Joy, but it is somewhat dangerous to his health as it will cause heavy vomiting which makes him hungry and thirsty and causes him to suffer a sugar crash, followed by almost instantaneous Joy withdrawal. * It is possible to find a letter from Ollie to Uncle Jack in mailboxes inside Hamlyn Village, simply titled "Jack". The letter doesn't directly have his name instead of saying it is from "Jack's nemesis, O.S". * It is possible that Ollie is inspired by the real-life Oliver Starkey, an English knight who lived in the 16th century and was the only English knight present during the Siege Of Malta. * His favourite book as a child was Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. * He is the first playable character without wearing a Happy Face mask. * Ollie was one point in love with Margaret’s mother before she was born, but she married Jack Worthing. * The drug Ollie mentions might be Oblivion, a pill Constable Peters almost gave Arthur when he's about to leave Wellington Wells. * General Byng mentions that Ollie use to be a song and dance man in We All Fall Down DLC. Category:Characters Category:Downer Category:Playable Characters